Takeaways from ViaSat CEO Dankberg’s May 17 investor conference remarks:
— LEO constellations: ‘I don’t understand OneWeb/SpaceX. Few care about latency.’
— ViaSat-2: 100-200 Mbps for residential users, wireless model in Lat Am.
— 6-month penalty vs Hughes’s Jupiter-2 will evaporate in 6 months.
— Gogo’s 2Ku service is ‘just an antenna. The issue is satellite capacity.’
— A prospective ban on laptops on commercial flights won’t materially damage larger IFC market.
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Mark also talked about needing capacity to manage high volume of flights around hub airports. What he is missing is that airplanes doesn’t spend more than 10% of their total flight time flying around airspace close to the hub.
@Leo, your comment only applies to service starting and ending at 10,000 feet. Today, some airlines like JetBlue offer internet service gate to gate. Gate to Gate availability will become the standard. As a passenger I’d appreciate being able to use the service if I am delayed on the tarmac.
@Ringo, again what % of that below 10k is of the total flight time?
@Leo, What about Gate to Gate connectivity don’t you understand? As a consumer, I want service the entire time.
Leo , right on!. About time someone commented of that fact. Dankberg don’t really mention that one, and that he has some beams focused on some airports, is only because of concentration of houses they are intending. Very few flights at FL33 crossing over airports, everyone else will be tray table up, laptops stowed and 2ku can easily handle the phones, phones us way less data anyway.
Hmmm, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Concentration of houses?? The target market of satellite service providers are the under served where getting basic connectivity is difficult. Example: Rural areas, and in this case the skies/tarmac. Not houses around airports.